


requiem for a totaled quadjumper

by Fashwiing



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: "Ben Solo was born as Force-sensitive as a potato" AU, F/M, Gen, I subscribe to the "Rey is the second coming of Midichlorean Jesus" theory, M/M, Smuggler Ben, eventual inevitable reylo, eventual inevitable stormpilot, featuring Ben's three siblings because there's no way Han and Leia would stop at one, idk why you would be, kinkmeme fill gotten out of hand, so there's no incest if you were worried, tags updated as the story progresses, we're all in the trash boat together
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-10
Updated: 2016-12-25
Packaged: 2018-05-25 22:37:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 14,468
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6212917
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fashwiing/pseuds/Fashwiing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kylo Ren hates sand. Trapped on a desert planet waiting for parts and eating stale rations, the last thing he ever expects to happen is to become somehow embroiled in the rescue of the little Resistance astromech belonging to his (hopefully not dead) old friend Poe Dameron. Being shot at by Stormtroopers and having his nose broken by a pretty scavenger girl was not how Ben Solo envisioned his day going when he'd woken up that morning, that's for kriffing sure. </p>
<p>No Force AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. that's my freighter, I don't know you!

**Author's Note:**

> Good morning friends! This is your captain speaking. This was originally intended as a fill for the kinkmeme, but then the entire AU just took hold of my brain and now I have NOTES written and PLANS made and BITS OF DIALOGUE PLANNED and it's terrible. everything is terrible. hope you enjoy.

Unkar Platt’s outpost stinks like the ass end of a refuse district on Coruscant, and every bit of stale provisions Kylo Ren tries to shovel into his mouth as quickly as he can has the same gritty aftertaste that only sand can provide. He grimaces and feels around his teeth with his tongue, trying to wipe the grains from his molars to avoid the unpleasant feeling of crunching down on them as he chews. Jakku orbits a yellow sun, and its burning rays bake the small sliver of skin that’s become visible at the back of the thick scarf he has wrapped around his neck and over the top of his head. Much like his food, and his mouth, and his pants, and his shoes, and probably even his gun, the scarf is full of sand.

Kylo Ren hates sand.

“Neme talamaq. Guaca skiduu telaqa.” Gesturing with his empty drink bowl and spitting a mouthful of sandy saliva onto the compacted ground of the lean-to serving as a restaurant of sorts, Kylo calls for another serving of the brown-tinged slop the people on this Force-forsaken Sarlacc pit of a planet like to call potable water. The heavyset Kelawatt that considers himself master of the establishment trundles over and sloshes some more of the drink into his bowl with one meaty hand, the other snatching away the credit chips Kylo offers like he thinks they might vanish. Wide mouth pursed tightly, the gangly man stuffed into a chair made for someone a fair amount smaller than him and possibly with several extra sets of limbs regards the drink with something resembling disgust. Of course a planet like Jakku wouldn’t have moisture farmers like any sort of respectable desert. Who needs drinkable water when you can have muddy, sandy, possibly radioactive groundwater pulled out of a well like a savage?

Kylo Ren takes a deep swig of the muddy water, tries not to let the sand settle in his mouth, and chases it with a large bite of the stale leavened rations he’d brought from his grounded quadjumper. A quick glance at the chronometer clipped to the back of his glove tells him he has another hour or so before the parts he’d requested from Platt could be picked up, and he shifts awkwardly in the small, uncomfortable chair he’s commandeered as he resigns himself to waiting out the day in a hot, smelly outpost on a hot, sandy kriffhole in the middle of nowhere.

That is, until a sand-colored blur vaults itself over his table with such force that the whole thing goes crashing to the hard-packed sandy ground, not even sparing him an apology as it- she?- ducks around the rusted red water pump that takes up most of the tent area and swings the metal pole in her hand with vicious accuracy. The woman hits home on whatever it is she’s attacking, and Kylo hears a strangled yell and a thump as her target falls to the ground. As he extricates himself from the chair and tries to go after the brunette with the buns- for compensation for the spilled water, to give her a piece of his mind, he’s not sure yet- a BB-unit astromech that looks a little familiar nearly bowls him over as it rolls past him hot on the woman’s heels. Kylo grabs the strap of his bag and slings it over his shoulder, long legs quickly taking him over to the scene of the ruckus, and he reaches for the woman’s shoulder just as she begins to jab at the man she’s managed to knock to the ground. 

His world explodes into pain and confusion as the metal staff in her hands switches directions and catches him full-on in the face without any hesitation.

“Slaggin’-“ Kylo clutches at his bleeding nose with a wide hand full of sandy scarf, reeling back as he’s stared down by the fierce hazel eyes of the woman who apparently has no compunctions when it comes to assaulting strange men in stinking, sandy outposts. She looks like she’s just about ready to sweep his legs out from under him and make him join the dark-skinned man she’s beaten into the sand, and in the interest of his continued well-being the smuggler-slash-transporter-slash-everyman throws his free hand into the air in a gesture of surrender. The motion makes his hand shift against his nose, and the resultant crunch makes him swear against his bloody hand and scarf.

“This is none of your concern!” Her voice is high and heavily accented, an interesting anomaly that completely escapes the tall, gangly man as blood trickles from his broken nose and stains the front of his scarf and white shirt. She rounds on the man she’d chased down, slamming her staff into the ground just in front of where he’d been trying to scoot away from her. The BB-unit trills angrily in binary, the little beeps and whistles coming so fast that all the smuggler can catch is words like “thief” and “jacket”, and something about a “Poe-

“You belong to Poe Dameron?” Kylo’s voice is muffled by the hand over his nose and the bloody scarf staunching the trickle that still flows from the break, but the BB-unit swivels around as he addresses it and cranes its little head back until its one optic can focus on his face. He can see the little lens zoom in to get a better look, and offers it an awkward bloody half-smile; he must look terrifying, because the droid scoots back several inches with a frightened-sounding trill and bleep. Now he knows where he’d seen the little round thing before, though. It was Poe’s personal astromech, a one-of-a-kind orange and white gyrosphere model with a particularly inquisitive AI circuit.

“So does that jacket! He’s stolen it,” the woman claims, gesturing with her staff at the dehydrated-looking man she’d so effectively trapped.

“I didn’t steal it! I’ve had a pretty messed up day, so I’d appreciate it if- OW!” The droid snaps its attention towards the young man and rolls close enough to extend its self-defense prongs, zapping him in the leg and making him yelp. “Cut that out!”

“If you didn’t steal it, where’d you get it?” Kylo asks. Again his words come out muffled, but the intent- and how far he looms above everyone else in this bizarre impromptu interrogation- makes his meaning perfectly clear. The droid zaps the man in the jacket, and he yelps again and swats at the electric prongs before the woman with the buns gives him a warning prod with her staff.

“Poe got captured by the First Order. I helped him escape, but the fighter we stole crashed. He-“ the man pauses, trying to find the right words. “Poe didn’t make it.”

Before the dark-skinned man can make it to his feet Kylo’s bloody hands are on the lapels of Poe’s jacket, hauling the stranger in familiar clothes up until his toes have to stretch to keep contact with the ground. His face covered in blood and his nose already beginning to bruise an ugly color on top of its new angle, the tall, pale man’s dark expression is a frightful sight. His black eyes blaze with anger, and the blood that’s made it past his lips stains his teeth and light beginnings of an unshaven beard in a way that makes him look like some wrathful creature thirsting for vengeance.  

“You’d better hope that you’re wrong,” the smuggler grinds out. “Any landing an idiot like you could walk away from, I’ve seen Poe Dameron walk away from worse.” He’d known the flyboy off and on over the years, and though he had a flair for the dramatic, his reputation for surviving the most bizarre of crashes by the skin of his pearly white dentition far preceded him.

“Wait, hold on,” both men turn to look at the woman with the buns. “Are you both with the Resistance?”  She draws away her staff and shoulders it, brow furrowing as she focuses on the tall man and his smaller victim. Kylo slowly lowers the dark-skinned man onto both feet, but doesn’t let go of the lapels of the jacket.

“Yes,” they both chorus- the taller phrasing it almost as a question and the shorter blurting it out as though it’s only just occurred to him.

“I’ve never met Resistance fighters before,” the woman’s frown lights into an inquisitive smile, and suddenly she looks a little less like a hardened warrior and a little more like the young woman in shifting desert clothing that she is.

“Well, uh,” the man wearing Poe’s jacket bats Kylo’s hands away from the lapels, taking a step back to put some distance between himself and the very menacing stranger. “This is what we look like. I mean, not everyone looks like me. Some of us look like him-“

BB-8 cuts him off with a shrill series of distressed bleeps and whistles, indicating with a shake of his little floating dome of a head in the direction behind the woman with the buns. All three of the impromptu motley crew turn to look at what the droid has noticed, quickly catching sight of the two Stormtroopers talking to a pair of local desert dwellers. One of the locals points directly at them with a fair amount of emphasis, and the Stormtroopers both turn. For a moment, the five hominids and a droid all lock eyes and optics and visors- and then the mismatched trio manage to scrape together enough sense between the three of them to scramble for the open tent flap behind them with BB-8 hot on their heels. Locals traversing the marketplace begin yelling and screaming as blaster fire starts peppering the crowd, and Kylo ducks under an awning just too low for him to clear safely right as a bright green bolt of plasma burns a hole clean through the fabric. He tries to continue forward in a straight line, but a firm hand grabs him by the elbow and yanks him behind a high stack of boxes underneath the drab grayish awning.

“What are they shooting at me for?!” The woman blurts out from her position furthest from the droid and the two ‘Resistance’ members.

“They saw you with me. You’re marked.” Next to Kylo’s elbow, his hand still firmly grasping at his upper arm where he had drug him behind the impromptu shelter, the man wearing Poe’s jacket is resolute in his reasoning.

“Don’t flatter yourself,” Kylo grouses. Painfully, he blows some congealed blood from his nose to try to clear his airway before spitting a clot of the same stuff into the sand. He pulls the scarf from his head and tries to mop up the blood from his mouth and chin with a clean section of it, but when he bumps his nose he hisses in pain and stops trying. “They’re not after either of you, you’re worthless to them. With Poe dead- and I still don’t believe that part- they’re probably trying to scrounge up any intel they can get their hands on, and that means getting their hands on the droid.”

“Then we need to get BB-8 off planet,” the woman suggests. The droid trills in agreement, and then bleeps out a series of increasingly urgent and worried noises. Between the tall smuggler and the diminutive desert-dweller, the dark-skinned mystery ‘Resistance’ man stills as though listening for something.

“We’ll take my quadjumper-“ Kylo starts to offer, but the other man cuts him off.

“TIE fighters!” That’s all the explanation they get before he has them both by the hand, dragging them away from their improvised shelter and into a throng of panicked outpost dwellers. BB-8 rolls along on the hard-packed sand behind them, a litany of panicked-sounding whistles and bloops streaming from his little domed head as he skitters across the ground as fast as his internal workings can carry him.

“I know how to run without you holding my hand!” Despite her protestations, the dark-haired woman with the buns makes no effort to shake her tanned hand free from the darker one that has it in a death grip.

“You don’t even know where my ship is!” Kylo yells over the noise of the crowd and the scream of the TIE fighters, just as a massive explosion cuts through the air behind them. With no more warning than that, the motley trio and their robotic charge are suddenly picked up and thrown a good fifteen feet by the blast wave of the fighter’s attempt on their lives. Sand goes everywhere, caking in the blood on Kylo’s face that hasn’t already managed to dry in the oppressive heat of the Force-forsaken desert planet.

His ears ringing, Kylo manages to roll himself onto his back in time to watch one of the TIE fighters streak overhead- likely to make a sharp turn and start another bombing run. He takes a moment to consider how impossible his life has managed to become in the last ten minutes, trying to catch his breath through the pain and awkward stuffiness of his newly-broken nose.

“Come on!” A hand roughly inserts itself into his field of view, and he finds himself looking up at the serious-looking young woman with the staff. The other man clutches at her other hand, looking like he might bolt like a scared nerf and drag her with him regardless of whether or not she’s gotten Kylo off his feet first. Dazed, he grabs her hand and lets her help him to his feet with a vicious tug- and they’re off again like a shot, ducking blaster fire as a platoon of  Stormtroopers rounds a small grouping of tents and spots them.

“My quadjumper’s-“ he starts to say, and the woman cuts him off.

“I know where it is!” She pulls the both of them around a corner and suddenly they’re at Niima’s north gate, running out into the extremely open and vulnerable expanse of hard-packed landing area where interplanetary passers-by often parked their vessels. Kylo starts to regret his solitary nature as the massive distance between their little group and his gleaming orange spacecraft stretches before them, but the scream of TIE fighters on their second approach urges him to continue running in a way that few other things could.

“Screw the jumper, that one’s closer!” He and the woman both spare a glance in the direction the other man is pointing, and likely make the same disgusted face. Kylo had seen the ancient YT-Model on his way into the outpost several hours earlier, and had even stopped for a good long minute or two to dwell on things that he’d have rather left dead and buried. But anyone with half a brain left in their braincase could see that the hunk of junk hadn’t been flown in at least a decade, if the heaps of detritus and large tarps covering parts of it were any indication.

“That one’s garbage! It hasn’t flown in years,” the woman asserts. She barely gives it more than a glance, preferring to keep on course to their original destination.

“We need to get out of the system before the First Order can get a bead on us! A quadjumper can hit hyperspace faster than you can say-“ before Kylo can say it, the TIE fighter screaming through the air behind them fires twice and hits the good-sized orange craft dead-on. It goes up in a ball of flames and a deafening explosion, acrid black smoke immediately pluming into the air above it.

“The garbage will do!” The woman yells out, immediately changing direction towards the YT-Model. The man in Poe’s jacket has to physically pull Kylo from where he’d stopped dead, staring at the smoking crater that had been his mostly-paid-for quadjumper.

The Guavians he’d bought it from were going to put a bounty on his head, there was no way around it.

“Come on!” The other man yells, yanking harder to get Kylo to run. They duck under the tarpoline covering the entrance ramp to the old YT-Model, and as the droid knocks past their heels to get up into the ship the dark-haired man starts to slow again. At the top of the access ramp, covered in the kind of grime no sane person likes to think about the origins of, the near-illegible designation plate for the old cargo ship stares him down as though it is a sentient entity that has come to pass judgment upon him. It is familiar, just as the silhouette of the old Corellian bucket of scrap was familiar against the shifting dunes and cloudless blue sky hours before, and just as the faint traces of small grubby handprints on the cream-colored walls are familiar to his much-grown fingers.

“The gunner’s position is down there! YT-Models need two pilots, can you fly?!” Kylo shakes himself from his reverie and hits the ramp controls to seal the ship up behind him, the movement practiced despite years of having never stepped foot upon the ship.

“Can I fly?!” He parrots incredulously. “Lady, I’ve been piloting Corellian YT-Models since before I could walk!”

“Good, I need a co-pilot!” The woman’s voice comes from the direction of the cockpit, as though she’s already traversed the layout of the ship a dozen times before. For all he knows, in its derelict state for the past decade or so, she’s learned its every nook and cranny as well as its rightful owner. He takes the familiar path himself with long strides, not sparing a glance for the bench seats and small dejarik table off to one side. He has to duck to get into the cockpit, his wide frame almost making him do the same sideways shuffle that he distinctly remembers Chewbacca being forced to do to get through the small door. The air is stifling in the sun-warmed cabin, and Kylo can already feel sweat beginning to bead anew on the back of his neck and the top of his forehead as he slides into what was once his large hairy uncle’s seat and divests himself of his bloody scarf and thick black vest. The mystery woman, desert clothes sticking out like a sore thumb in the dark interior, is already running pre-flight checks and priming the- Kylo’s brain shorts for a moment at the new addition to the console.

“What moof-milker thought it was a good idea to put a compressor on a YT-Model?” She resolutely ignores him and hits the controls to finish powering up the craft- which does so for only a moment before dying back down with a whine. Without preamble, Kylo rocks back in his seat and aims a hard kick at a specific spot on the console, adding his boot print to the slightly dented and discolored patch of metal just above one of the control levers. The engine thrums to life again, the lights in the cockpit blinking into existence and surrounding them both with a delicate glow. The life support systems kick into action as well, pumping cool air into the overheated cockpit as the woman pulls back on the controls and they lurch into the open sky. A number of metal cargo containers fall from the ship with a cacophony of screeches and bangs, tarpolines ripping away to expose the cloudless blue sky- and the two TIE fighters headed straight for them.

“Keep low! It confuses their tracking!” As the woman pulls them immediately into a steep upward climb, the man in the lower gunner’s position manages to hit the comm controls somehow and comes over the tinny speaker in the cockpit. Working in tandem, the two pilots quickly bring the unwieldy craft into a smooth dive around the edge of a dune. A bright green laser bolt rockets past the cockpit with a screech of rent oxygen, and Kylo wastes no time reaching over to engage the aft shields before steadying the craft out of yet another extreme turn.

“We need to lose those tag-alongs before we have any chance of gettin’ past the Destroyer in orbit,” he mentions offhand. When a warning light begins to blink at him insistently, followed by a nagging incessant beeping, he slams his fist into the dash twice to make it stop. His eyes on the small readout of the immediate radar area, he primes one of the automatic starboard guns and tries to get a lock on the closer of the two fighters riding their tail.

“I’m working on that!” Without any other means of heads-up, the lanky dark-haired man nearly flies from his seat and into the wall next to him as the woman in the main pilot’s seat pulls a turn so hard it makes the bottom drop out of his stomach. Behind them, in one of the small hallways of the ship, the little spherical droid screams in what could almost be described as terror- if a droid could feel something like that. The field of debris that stretches out before them when he manages to level them off, the massive engines of Imperator and ImpStar Deuce-class Star Destroyers peeking out of the shifting sands in the dozens, is enough to give him stunned pause.

“Got one!” The man in the gunner’s position shouts out with glee, and Kylo can almost hear how excited the young man is through the speaker. As he watches, one of the blips tailing them on the radar screen disappears as abruptly as the faint sound of an explosion behind them.

“Lucky shot, kid! Don’t get cocky! That other pilot’s all over the place, I think he knows we’re tryin’a turn him into a carbon smear.” A few more shots squeeze over and under the old YT-Model, and the brunette pilot deftly maneuvers them out of their immediate path while Kylo keeps them steady. Dipping low, she almost skims the dunes before rocketing around a tight corner and slipping inside one of the hulking Star Destroyers like she isn’t playing touch-and-die with a couple billion tons of Imperial scrap.

“I’m trying to cage him in for a better chance! Can you get a lock on him?” Another gleeful whoop is all they get from the comm system as a massive burning ball of First Order technology hits the far wall of the Star Destroyer’s engine compartment, caught by the gunner’s fire just as it entered through the exhaust port on their tail.

“That answers that, I suppose,” Kylo quips. The brunette at his side pulls another hard turn and guns the engine, rocketing the small cargo freighter out of the derelict Imperial vessel and into the open blue sky. They burn atmo faster than he expects, the old beater of a ship managing the buffets of the desert planet’s upper atmosphere with grace with her two pilots at the helm. At the barest reaches of their radar screen, a massive black shape blots out a quadrant of stars as it moves in geosynchronous orbit with the desert world. It’s big- easily twice the size of the picked-clean skeletons that litter the surface of Jakku below them- and even at a distance they can see that it’s bristling with weaponry.

“How are we doing on the hyperdrive?” The woman asks offhand. Kylo plugs in a few numbers and gets a clear reading for the section of starway directly in front of them, no immediate dangers cropping up on the star charts for a large enough swathe of distance that he feels safe confirming their course.

“Punch it and we’ll blow this kriffhole,” he replies. Without further ado the brunette- he still doesn’t know her name, or the gunner’s for that matter- pushes forward on the hyperdrive levers, and the achingly familiar sight of the stars becoming smeared streaks of light on the YT-Model’s cockpit window becomes the only thing he can manage to focus on.

When he finally pulls his eyes away from the sight, sparing a glance over at the lady taking up the captain’s seat, he’s surprised to see that she’s disappeared entirely. The cockpit door is open behind him, and he picks his vest and scarf back up as he makes his way into the small common area behind her.

“I don’t know your name,” he can hear her saying as he shoulders back into his vest and absently reaches under one of the bench seats for a dusty first aid kit, one that he distinctly recalls his large and hairy uncle stocking under his father’s nose for the all-too-frequent occurrences of glancing blaster burns and maintenance mishaps.

“It’s FN-“ the man catches himself, and it comes out sounding more like ‘Ephin’ than a designation. “It’s Finn.”

“Ephin Finn?” Kylo pulls a medicated moisture wipe and an unopened bacta patch from the mess of discarded wrappers that litter the little kit, wiping the remaining blood from his face and delicately cleaning the crusty blood from his airway with a twisted corner. He sticks the bacta across his broken nose as he turns the corner in the hallway, only to come face-to-face with the mystery desert woman as she whirls on him and fixes him with a smile that glitters in the grimy old Corellian freighter.

“I’m Rey, what’s your name?” She asks, and the brilliance of her beautiful smile- the way her eyes crinkle at the edges and the excitement in her voice suffuses the entire ship with something he could almost call pure Light- promptly makes him draw a blank on quite literally everything he’d ever invented for himself as an identity.

“Ben Solo,” he mumbles. Behind the overlarge bacta patch on his nose, and through the awkward break in the cartilage, the words tumble out less as a name and more as a single long garbled word. He immediately regrets the two little words, not even sure why he’d said them, but then the woman- Rey- smiles at him again and he can’t remember why he hesitated. He has a vague sense that her smile might be dangerous, seeing as how he gets stupid every time she fixes it on him.

“Benz Olo?” He’d be damned if the girl didn’t have half of Jakku stuck in her auricular canals, but that name would work just as well- and it would probably keep him from being associated with loftier, more well-known names.

“Yeah, but most folk call me Kylo Ren. I run the Knights of Ren.” Rey’s brilliant smile comes back as he mentions the small smuggling ring he’d started a number of years previously, but Finn’s countenance seems to darken into a furrowed frown.

“The Guavian enforcer gang?” The shorter man asks, and Kylo almost slaps an open palm to his face before he remembers that his nose is broken. Two or three of his Knights (and honestly, what had he been thinking with a name like that?) were, in fact, heavily involved with the Guavians- that was how he’d gotten his ill-fated quadjumper. But as a rule, he liked to consider his little operation to be unaffiliated.

“No, the smuggling ring!” Apparently he doesn’t even need to defend himself, as Rey immediately comes to his aid. They don’t have long to debate the exact terms describing his self-employment, however, as a klaxon begins to sound and a huge explosion of steam billows out of the nearby grated floor with a bang.

“The motivator!” Kylo and Rey both yell at once. Finn almost loses his balance behind them as the old YT-Model drops out of hyperspace with a massive lurch, but he follows dutifully as the two pilots run to pull up the access panel and Rey drops into the billowing steam cloud without so much as a by-your-leave.

“How do you know that’s safe to breathe?!” The young man dutifully holds the piece of uprooted flooring when Kylo hands it to him, and peers into the depths of the ship as though hoping to catch a glimpse of the woman inside.

“I don’t, but it’s the only way we’re getting the hyperdrive back,” she replies. Kylo returns with a massive toolkit in his arms, the box almost too large for a human to handle effectively. He drops it to the floor with a bang, and starts rooting around in it for the requisite tools.

“We’ll pull her up if she starts screaming,” he says, elbow deep in hyperspanners and sonic screwdrivers of various sizes and widths.

“Don’t worry though! If you hear screaming and swearing, I’m fine. Can you hand me a .35 socket lever?” Kylo dutifully pulls the correct size tool from the box after a moment of rummaging, and plunges it into the steam. A small hand grabs his, warm even in the hot vapor, and then it’s gone along with the lever in the space of a heartbeat.

This is not how Kylo Ren (or, for that matter, Ben Solo) thought his day would end. But as he makes himself comfortable and resigns himself to the job of making sure the young desert-dweller in the bowels of his father’s ship has the tools she needs, he honestly can’t find too much fault with the company he’s managed to find himself in.


	2. zen and the art of starship maintenenace

“Can’t I go turn off that kriffin’ klaxon?” Finn asks, still holding onto the uprooted piece of flooring as Rey digs around inside the bowels of the ancient Corellian freighter. He goes so far as to almost set the flooring aside, but freezes in his tracks when Kylo points a large and somewhat intimidating hydrospanner at him.

“Don’t even think about moving. BB-8, mute the alarm.” The little round droid trills an affirmative and rolls over to the computer interface in the ship’s lounge, plugging in for only a moment before the alarm cuts off abruptly.

“Why can’t I move, huh? And how do you know the droid didn’t just start some kind of self-destruct?” The thought of narrowly escaping death at the hands of the First Order, only to be killed by the accidental file-shuffling of a BB-unit, quite obviously has the young man on edge. Kylo’s original comparison of the kid to a scared nerf doesn’t seem quite so far off, the more time he spends with him.

“YT-Models don’t have self-destructs, moron. ‘sides, with all the work that’s been put into upgrading the engines on this thing, puttin’ a self-destruct in it would just be a waste of good parts.” Instead of continuing to gesture with the hydrospanner in his hand, the dark-haired man hands it down into the still-billowing column of steam in front of him. He sits on the edge of the open grate, his legs dangling down into the ship’s inner workings as he takes tools from the young woman working below him and hands her new ones as she asks for them. The overlarge bacta patch on his nose, stinking and ugly though it is, serves the dual purpose of making everything he says sound slightly slurred and ridiculous.

“You ask me, putting new parts in this rust bucket would be like parking an Upsilon-class transport in a spice farmer’s barn,” Finn grumbles. He shifts his grip on the floor grate, but continues to hold it open for the two performing maintenance.

“Good thing nobody asked you then, huh?” The two men glare ineffectually at each other, the silence stretching between them as the little orange and white droid rolls its way back over towards their little motley crew.

“Son of a Hutt-kriffing Teedo!” Beneath the grated floor, Rey bites out the curse like she’s just been personally offended by the hyperdrive motivator’s parental lineage. A small hand, slick with vapor from the hot steam, grasps at the edge of the access panel so as to ease in her climb out of the ship’s inner workings. Her hair sticks to her face as she greedily gulps down great gasps of the cool atmosphere that suffuses the rest of the freighter’s interior. A thick sheen of sweat makes her sandy desert garb stick to her tanned skin awkwardly, and the two men regard her with various expressions of concern and badly-concealed wonder.

“You want me to give it a go?” Kylo asks after a moment. Rey shakes her head, slicking the few strands of hair stuck to her forehead back into the tight style she has the rest pulled into. His demeanor is businesslike, but the younger man standing beside him can’t seem to stop gaping at her like she’s some sort of goddess coated in a thin film of superheated atmospheric vapor and irradiated Jakku sand. When she spares the taller man a smile, however, he manages to somehow forget how to work his own tongue.

“Hand me that harris wrench and I’ll get back to it,” she says with a wide grin- truly in her element and enjoying every moment of it. When Kylo doesn’t respond, the overlarge sonic bolt-driver in his hands unmoving despite her request, the smile quickly vanishes- to be replaced by thinned lips and an unimpressed tight frown. “Do you speak Basic? Do you want to get out of here alive? Hand me the slagging wrench!”

Kylo jolts into action, the grimace he makes at his own stupidity further jostling the delicate semi-healed break in the bridge of his nose. He twists around from where he’s seated, throwing the sonic bolt-driver into the overlarge toolbox at his side before rummaging around for the requested wrench. He finds it after a moment, pulls a small clump of Wookiee hair from the socket gears at the business end, and twists back around to hand it to the small scavenger woman. She takes it from him with smaller, tighter smile, and drops back down into the steam without further ado.

“Can’t the both of you work on it together?” Finn, still doing his best impression of a flighty nerf, asks. A small, agreeing trill issues forth from the BB-unit that’s managed to roll up between him and Kylo, sounding both concerned and inquisitive in its own little binary way. “There’s no way a five minute lightspeed jump got us out of the system. The longer we’re at sublight the more likely it is that they’ll catch us on a scanner. Two heads are better than one!”

“Too many prep droids spoil the portions,” Rey calls up from below the still-billowing vapor. Despite the speed at which she’s performing the repairs, she has yet to give the impression that she is in any way hurrying through the task. Her skills with a toolkit are certainly on par with her skills at the craft’s controls, but they’re coupled with an unwavering patience born of years of experience and a deep understanding of the machinery as a whole. “Besides,” she adds after a moment, “he wouldn’t fit down here. It would be like stuffing a Wookiee into an X-Wing.”

 “I’ll have you know,” Kylo says after a silent moment, somewhere between mockingly affronted and actually affronted, “that Wookiees make excellent pilots and gunners. I’d rather have a Wookiee at my back than Mr. ‘The First Order is tracking me down because I’m so important’ over here.” He shrugs a shoulder at Finn as he speaks, and the young man replies with an indignant squawk.  

“Oh, I’m sorry! I didn’t know you guys wanted to play tag with a Resurgent-class Star Destroyer. I’ll just go figure out how to turn us around so we can go back and have a nice friendly chat with the First Order.” Finn makes like he’s about to set the section of flooring back down again, and Kylo points another tool at him.

“Didn’t I say not to move? Don’t touch anything. You’ll break something,” the gangly smuggler orders.

“Quit treating me like I’m a Zillo Beast set loose in a populated area! I’m not gonna break everything I touch!” Finn uses one hand, empty of a pointy tool though it is, to point right back at the older man. He almost loses his grip on the heavy grating, and quickly goes back to grasping it with both hands to steady it.

“Stop it, both of you! You sound like a couple of bickering old protocol droids.” Rey, sounding exasperated, clambers once more out of the hole in the floor for a breath of cool air. A smear of grease paints the back of one hand and a stripe across her forehead, and she seems to be perfectly aware that it’s there because she rubs at it with her cloth-wrapped forearm. “If we want to get away from the First Order, I need a heading. BB-8 said the location of the Resistance base was need-to-know, and if we’re going to get you three there in one piece I’m going to need to know!”

Before either of them can speak, Rey drops back below the billowing steam cloud once more. The silence is awkward, almost deafening, and Kylo watches from the corner of his eye as a range of emotions seems to flit across Finn’s face. The young man seems conflicted- his gaze jumping from the droid, to the open maintenance pit, to Kylo himself, and then back to the droid several times before he screws his face into a look of intense concentration and introspection.

“I honestly haven’t been back to a base since the Resistance was on Dantooine, and that was a good ten orbit cycles ago. There’s no way they haven’t moved on by now,” the smuggler says. He turns his attention away from the other man, instead peering down into the steam still escaping from the hyperdrive motivator.

“What about Finn, then?” Rey’s reply jolts the young man out of his pained introspection, and he once again adopts his natural state of flighty nerf.

“I’ll ask,” Kylo offers. He turns his full attention back to the younger man, the full weight of the mockingly inquisitive look on his face somewhat dulled by the bacta patch still clinging to his skin. The longer he had spent around the kid, the more he had begun to suspect that he wasn’t necessarily what he seemed to be- and now the nerf-in-the-speeder-headlights look that graces the ‘Resistance’ fighter’s face only seems to confirm his suspicions. BB-8, sitting beside the taller man, turns his own little optics on the young man as well.

“Why can’t BB-8 tell us? There’s lots of bases, he should tell us the location of the one he needs to go to.” The droid in question rolls backwards a half-step as if in shock, a question blooping from its vocalizer in a somewhat urgent tone. The bleeps and clicks continue as the little domed head twirls around to look at Kylo, and then completes the rotation to fix back on Finn with a final series of whistles.

“I don’t speak that! Do you speak that? What did he say?” Finn’s tone is demanding as he stands to the side with the grate still clutched in his hands, but he leans in the direction of the smuggler and the little droid despite the heavy burden.

“He said that he doesn’t think you’re actually with the Resistance,” Kylo deadpans. Finn looks indignant, sputtering for a long moment as he tries to come up with the words to rebut the accusation. Finally, despite Kylo’s protestation, he drags the grate over to the wall and leans it up against a relatively clear-looking spot before crouching down at the edge of the access shaft with the other two.

“Fine,” the dark-skinned man hisses, “between us guys, I’m not actually with the Resistance.” The little droid reels back in something approximating shock, a trill and a bleep punctuating its apparent horror.

“Really. I had no idea,” Kylo deadpans again. His gaze is dry and humorless, and it gets a sarcastic smile right back from the other man.

“Hey, a day cycle ago I was a regular rank-and-file Stormtrooper. As soon as I busted Poe out I was dead to the Order, worth even less than a Resistance fighter. I’m here, right now, because I saw what the Order was doing and I knew that it was wrong.” Finn pauses for breath, the tight hiss of his voice barely audible so as to avoid involving Rey in the conversation. “I want to put as much distance between me and the Finalizer as I possibly can, as fast as I possibly can. If that means taking you, the droid, and Rey to wherever the Resistance is holed up- you bet I’ll do it.”

The look the young man gives the smuggler and the droid is imploring, almost pleading. Kylo almost feels bad about staying stone-faced behind his stinking bacta patch, the only hint of an emotion coming in the form of a slowly-rising eyebrow as he regards the former ‘trooper unblinkingly. He can see the kid squirm, and almost takes pleasure in trying to make the kid so desperate as to beg for their assistance.

“I need that sonic bolt-driver again!” Rey’s voice breaks through their semi-hushed conversation as she heaves herself back out of the steam once more. The bits of hair she’d tried to tame at one point were plastered to her forehead once more, a thin sheen of sweat coating every visible bit of skin either man could see. Kylo finally breaks off his tense staring contest in favor of stretching towards the oversized toolkit, rummaging blindly until his long fingers close around the familiar handle. The old bolt-driver is a comforting weight, just as the bright daycycle lights of the YT-Model’s interior are a comforting atmosphere. He hands it off to the young scavenger, fingers brushing hers again.

“I didn’t hear over the steam, where’s the base?” she asks brightly. Kylo turns back to Finn with a wicked glint shining in his eyes.

“Yeah, Finn. Where’s the base?” Finn makes a face that communicates quite plainly where Kylo can take his base and shove it. He gestures ineffectually with his free hand like he might even be considering strangling the older man, but then seems to center himself and make a split-second decision. He focuses his attention on BB-8, and the droid makes a small squeak of surprise.

“Go on BB-8, tell her where we need to go.” The little spheroid reels back again, the focusing mechanism in its optic pickup lens widening in something that could almost be called stunned surprise. Its head swirls around to find Kylo’s intent gaze, and then whirls again to find Rey’s expectant one. Hemmed in on three sides, the poor little white and orange astromech bleeps and bloops in a worried tone as it backs away from the motley crew in the only free direction left to it. It almost seems to quiver in place, the usual small shifts to remain upright replaced with a frightened-looking shaking as its optics shift from one person to the next at a rapid pace. Finally, the droid blurts out a long string of whistles and beeps.

“The Ileenium system?” Kylo and Rey both chorus.

“Why am I the only one that doesn’t speak that?!” Finn bemoans. He finally sits back on the floor rather than stay in his awkward kneeling crouch, and there’s an audible thump as he elbows the toolkit and swears loudly.

“You’ll get over it,” Kylo says offhandedly, turning to address Rey next. “Ileenium system probably means D’Qar, do you think you can get the ship into a decent enough shape to get us there in one piece?”

“I’m certainly trying!” Rey shoots back, before dropping below the cloud of billowing steam once more. As soon as she’s gone, Finn turns his attention to the still-shaking droid.

“Sorry I put you on the spot like that, little buddy. Thanks for telling her,” he offers the droid a thumbs-up, and the little mechanical’s imitative response with its welding torch is enough to get a bark of surprised laughter out of Kylo.

“I always knew astromechs had personality,” he says. Surprise colors his voice, and a smile paints his long features. If he hadn’t still had the stinking, overlarge bacta patch stretched across his still-healing nose, the expression would almost be a charming one on him.

“Hand me the bonding tape!” Rey pops back up out of the access pit without warning, the somewhat-dwindling cloud of steam vapor parting around her as she grasps at the grated floor to keep herself steady. When Finn holds up a roll of duct sealer, she shakes her head. “No, the one next to it!” she says, and Finn holds up a small white roll of thread-locking tape. “No! I’m pointing right at it!” the young man tries again, this time grabbing blindly and holding up what appears to be an out-of-date roll of medical tape with a clump of Wookiee fur stuck to it. Kylo, taking pity on the former ‘trooper, picks up the correct roll of tape and hands it to the young scavenger. She gives him a tight smile and drops out of sight once more, but it’s only a moment later that the venting column of steam cuts itself short.

“I can take the three of you to whichever Neutral Territory spaceport is closest to Ileenium, you can catch a ride to the Resistance base from there,” Rey’s voice filters up from below the floor. Surprised, Kylo and Finn both lean over the opening to peer down at the desert scavenger.

“You’re not coming with us?” Kylo is the one that ends up posing the question, breaking a momentary silence between the two men and a droid.

“Of course not. I have to get back to Jakku,” the brunette answers. By her tone, you would think that this was the most obvious answer available to them.

“Back to-“ Finn sputters. “Why does everyone want to go back to Jakku?!” There was almost certainly a story behind his confused outburst, but not one that necessarily mattered at the moment.

“If anyone got holorecordings of us while we were in Niima, there’s no way you don’t already have a bounty on your head. Every port, dive, and spacedock between here and the Galactic Core is gonna have your face on the wall and a hefty chunk of credits attached to it.” Kylo’s assessment of the situation is clinical, if not somewhat overstated. “Every bounty hunter worth a couple grains of spice will be on your tail as soon as you hit civilization.”

“And there’s nothing worth going back to Jakku for! What, do you miss the sand? The heat? The scraps?” Finn blurts out- still, apparently, trying to wrap his head around the concept of someone willingly going to Jakku. “There’s sand that actually tries to kill you! I almost got eaten. By sand!”

“He’s got a point. Can’t trust a planet covered in sand, let alone sand that tries to kill you,” the tall smuggler interjects. Rey spares a glance upward at the two men peering down at her, the barest roll of her eyes visible as she refocuses back on the work at hand. “You’re on the fastest ship in this quadrant, you’re a pretty good pilot, and you can go anywhere you want. Why Jakku?” The question falls from Kylo’s lips before he can stop himself, fearing for a moment that he might sound more interested in the answer than would be healthy to let on. The woman is a damned good pilot, and with his quadjumper having gone the way of the Mythosaur he would need someone like her if he planned on adopting his father’s old beater of a cargo ship as his own.

“…Did you leave someone behind?” Finn poses the question almost delicately, as though it’s only just occurred to him that the angry ranting about Jakku having no value of note may have somehow hurt the young woman’s feelings. “Family? A boyfriend?” he pauses again, like something had just come to mind. “You got a cute boyfriend?”

“I’m sure she’ll be happy to introduce the two of you once we’re not being hunted like womp rats,” Kylo deadpans. Finn shoves at his shoulder indignantly, almost toppling the smuggler out of his seat on the ledge and into the access pit. Below them Rey tugs a final twist on the bolt securing the errant steam tube she’d been repairing, stowing the sonic bolt-driver and the roll of bonding tape in the folds of her sandy desert garb before finding a couple of small footholds to brace herself on and lift herself up out from under the floor. Kylo quickly scrambles to his feet to get out of her way, bizarrely coordinated despite his long and lanky appearance. Once on his feet, he offers the woman a hand to help pull herself up out of the maintenance pit with- but he’s summarily ignored as she braces herself against one of her footholds and jumps just far enough to hook a leg up on the floor level. She rolls onto her back on the grimy, worn-smooth grate, and takes a great handful of the loose wrap around her shoulders to mop at the sweat cooling on her skin.

The bright, triumphant smile that graces her features lasts only for a moment, as the interior lighting of the old YT-Model flickers and then switches to the low-power setting.

“Now what?!” Rey grouses from her position on the cold metal floor. It had been a balm to her steam-warmed skin, but now she sits herself up and gets to her feet as she looks around in confusion.

“Not sure,” Finn replies. He gets to his feet as well, and the little BB-unit next to him trills uncertainly as it weaves around him. “Could it be the motivator?”

“I get the feeling that you know absolutely nothing about starship maintenance.” Kylo’s statement is not, in any way, phrased as a question. “But no,” he humors the younger man, “Rey just fixed the hyperdrive motivator. This is something else.” He punctuates his statement by turning and heading for the cockpit, shifting slightly sideways to fit his wide frame through the door without banging his elbows against the frame. Finn follows, the slight step-up just before the cockpit door keeping the little spheroid at his heels from going any further. BB-8 bleeps loudly and with great emphasis at being left out of the proceedings, knocking its little round body against the impassable step in something approximating anger.

“Could the central computing core have overloaded and reset? This scrap bucket hasn’t been booted up in almost a decade,” Rey wonders aloud as she makes her own way into the cockpit. She pushes past Finn, who falls willingly into one of the bucket seats in the second row, and settles herself into the empty pilot’s seat. Kylo kicks the console again, but except for a quickly-aborted whirr of something attempting and failing to start up, the cockpit remains oppressively dark. Usually lit by the various panels of instrumentation, the cockpit had no need for the emergency lighting system- and therefore the only light available to them is the bright unfiltered starlight from outside the viewpanes.  

“The computing core got reinforced years ago to deal with the additional stress of the engine modifications. The redundancies even have redundancies, it’s the only damned thing about this screaming metal death trap that actually works,” Kylo grouses as he toggles a series of switches and then slams a closed fist onto the console. For a split second the abortive startup noise fills the cockpit again, and he groans audibly and runs a hand back through his shaggy black hair.

“You know a lot about this ship,” Rey ventures. The smuggler pauses, fearing for a moment that he’d been somehow caught red-handed and identified as someone far more interesting than just a simple loner with a broken nose and a wrecked quadjumper. The momentary fear must show on his face, because the scavenger continues her train of thought. “You said it was the fastest ship in this quadrant, so you must know whoever modified it.”

“I said I learned to fly on a YT-Model, didn’t I?” The evasive non-answer is all he gives her before conveniently busying himself with the controls again. “Looks like everything’s been overridden, which means someone had to broadcast the master control code for the computing core. The list of people that know that code can be written on the palm of my hand, and I’ve got a pretty good idea of just who has a lock on us.”

“What’s that?!” Finn exclaims from behind the two pilots, jolting from his seat and leaning over the console to crane his neck and peer out the topmost viewpane. A large, dark shape blots out the stars above them, the deep red glow of running lights slowly suffusing their cockpit with an eerie atmosphere. “Is it the First Order? Did they find us?”

“Worse,” Kylo grumbles. Beside him, Finn turns and gapes. To him, nothing could possibly be worse than the First Order. Behind the former ‘trooper, Rey regards the lanky smuggler with a somewhat skeptical expression.

“You certainly have a flair for the dramatic, don’t you?” Kylo doesn’t have a chance to rebut the accusation, as the heavy thump of strong artificial gravity asserting itself shakes the ship so hard that Finn stumbles and falls across his lap. The young man’s elbow nearly ends up in his eye, and the stink of luggabeast and Niima grime fills his nostrils before he manages to shove the flailing ball of human off of him. Out the forward viewpanes, the motley crew can see the slowly-sealing doors of the massive craft- a trawler or junker of some kind, no doubt- close around them like the jaws of some great and hungry beast.

“I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” Finn whispers into the still silence following the closure of the hangar doors. Except for the occasional clank and bang of the old ship settling in the sudden onset of gravity, you could almost hear a pin drop in the eerily-dead quiet.

“If it’s who I think it is, he’s just a crabby old pirate. The Wookiee is the one you want to watch out for.” The silence makes Kylo’s hushed tone seem far louder than it actually is. He extricates himself from his seat and heads out into the ship proper, grabbing his discarded shoulder bag from one of the chairs and pulling a small crystal-powered blaster from its depths.

“I can’t fight a Wookiee!” Finn exclaims, following behind the smuggler as he tries to get his point across. “What are you gonna do, shoot our way out of this? You’re a big dude, but a Wookie would rip your arms off!”  

“Quiet, both of you!” Rey, having followed the two of them into the open common area of the ship, crosses immediately to where she’d stowed her staff beneath the dejarik table for safekeeping.  BB-8, rolling along behind her, navigates a quick path around the still-open access shaft in the center of the floor to continue following. The droid bleeps and whirrs in concern, and its little query is punctuated almost immediately by the sound of the outer boarding ramp being lowered. “We’re being boarded, and we may have to fight our way out,” she continues. “If neither of you is going to fight the Wookiee, I’ll do it.”

“Trust me, lady, you don’t want to fight the Wookiee-“ further conversation is cut short as the main entrance to the ship opens with a pneumatic hiss. From their vantage point at the end of the ship’s main corridor, the three humans and a droid watch as the old Corellian freighter is boarded- by none other than a diminutive brunette girl wielding a westar that had almost certainly seen better days. Her long hair, pulled back into a series of small tails reminiscent of a traditional Naboo style, is the same black-brown shade as the enigmatic Kylo Ren’s. When she turns and spots the small crew, leveling her beaten-to-hell sidearm at them, the resemblance in the girl’s face to the smuggler’s own is uncanny enough that both Finn and Rey spare the tall man a glance before fixing their attention back on the one-woman boarding party.

“Dad, c’mere!” the girl’s tone is surprisingly commanding despite her small stature, and she’s completely businesslike as she continues to threaten the trio and their adopted droid with her blaster. “You’re gonna want to see this!”

“I’m coming! Keep your holster on.” The second voice is that of a man’s. Older and laden with a fair amount of surly crabbiness, Finn and Rey both make the immediate assumption that he must be the pirate Kylo had spoken of earlier. If the girl is his daughter and the man himself is quite obviously the pirate, that leaves the Wookiee as an as-of-yet-unknown quantity in their equation. The silver-haired man that comes through the ship’s entrance behind the girl is tall, though he gives the impression of having once been slightly less hunched in his stature. His posture is straight-backed and proud, yet still his demeanor seems as though a great weight rests on the worn and weary shoulders of his scruffy leather jacket. He takes in the interior of the ship with a slowly-widening smile, the kind expression reading less as that of a conquering scrapper with a new prize in his clutches and more as that of a man whose contentment could suffuse the entire craft with its warm glow. He turns to take in the rest of the ship’s interior and his eyes fall on the three humans and their softly-blooping cargo- and just like that, the warm smile vanishes to be replaced with narrowed eyes and a suspicious frown.

“Ben?” the old man asks.

“Hey, dad.” Kylo resists the urge to wave awkwardly under his father’s calculating gaze, but settles for clipping his palm-sized blaster to the belt at his hip in a somewhat-peaceable gesture instead.

The utter silence that suffuses the Millennium Falcon isn’t allowed to live for very long.

“What the hell happened to your nose?”


	3. [muffled rathtar noises in the distance]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This has been sitting on my hard drive since March, 75% finished. I apologize. I don't know if it's ever getting updated again, but I felt like I was doing you guys a disservice by not sharing what I'd written when I had so much done.

“The kid is your pilot?” Finn hesitates to call the silver-haired pirate ‘old’ out loud, not just because he doesn’t give the impression of it, but because he gives the impression that he would shoot anyone who dared do so. Kylo, or Benz, or Ben- whatever the slag his name was- having indicated Rey as the pilot that had flown them past the Finalizer’s blockade of Jakku, nods.

“I’m not a child!” Rey protests, sticking one sharp elbow in the tall smuggler’s side and making him yelp. The dark-haired girl standing beside the old pirate laughs, and the sound pulls another one of those wide smiles from the target of the scavenger’s ire. He holds out his arms, the smile never leaving his face, and she holsters her old westar before running to him and leaping up into the waiting embrace. Kylo lifts the diminutive girl clean off her feet, spinning her around once as she giggles and laughs.

“The last time I saw you outside of a holovid you were like half this size.” Ben sets the girl down and tousles her hair, a task without much difficulty as she barely reaches his shoulder at her size. “You sure didn’t do a lot of growing up, Padme.”

Finn sidles up to Rey, the both of them backing away from what reads quite obviously as a semi-touching family reunion. BB-8 bloops inquisitively as it follows them, not quite understanding the concept of feeling left out of private proceedings. None of them notice as the old silver-haired pirate brushes past the mismatched siblings in the center of the lounge as they play catch-up, making a beeline for the cockpit. Rey is oddly quiet as she watches Ben and his sister talk, a pensive frown slowly making its way across her face as the two embrace again.

“Are you alright?” Finn ventures. He isn’t sure how to proceed in a situation like this, having never really encountered the concept of family or the idea that you could miss them. The desert woman’s frown does not dissipate, though she gives the young former ‘trooper a half-smile in an attempt to assuage his worry.

“It’s nothing for you to worry about,” she asserts. Further prying into the scavenger’s sudden change in mood is rendered impossible as a great roar splits through the cabin of the ship, making the little spheroid chasing at their heels squeal in fear. Before Rey can react- she had, after all, offered to fight off the Wookiee- the great lumbering hominid ducks into the lounge area and sweeps both Solo siblings into a long-armed hug. He picks them both up, though much less so than Ben had done with Padme, and the exited litany of Shyriiwook continues as brown and black-colored hands pat the smuggler down as though checking him for injuries.

“Slow down, Chewie!” Ben laughs as he says it, but allows the Wookiee his peace of mind. Upon further inspection, Rey and Finn both notice the slow movements of the massive furry alien- joints once fluid and fur once a deep brown color now creaking and significantly run-through with streaks of gray. The old Wookiee, much like the old pirate, gives the impression of having once been far taller- or perhaps, at least, much less world-weary. He finishes his pat-down of the smuggler with a tousle of his wavy black-brown hair, bumping their foreheads together in a gesture that is distinctly familial. Chewie bleats out a question as he draws away, indicating Rey and Finn with one large hand and a nod of his head.

“I’m Rey, he’s Finn. The droid’s name is BB-8,” Rey introduces their small crew with a few curt nods. The slight frown has yet to leave the edges of her mouth, making her look rather downcast in the harsh overhead lights of the old YT-Model freighter. More than anything her pretty face can betray, it’s the dull sadness in her eyes that catches on Finn’s curiosity.

“You speak that thing’s language?” Practicing some modicum of tact, Finn changes the subject. Chewie roars in offense, just as the old pirate makes his way back into the ship’s lounge from the cockpit- and with a grim sort of unhappy expression etched into the deep lines of his face.

“Yeah, and he can understand you too,” the grizzled smuggler snaps out. “What moof-milker put a compressor on the ignition line?”

“Unkar Platt did that,” Rey offers. “He did it years ago, back when he first got it from the Irving boys. I told him it was a bad idea, but the ship’s just been gathering dust outside Niima for ages so it’s not like it’s ever gotten a proper test run.”

“How the slag did those Irving twits get their grubby paws on my ship? Did they steal it from Ducane?” The pirate is demanding in his search for answers, and he crosses the room to almost loom over the pilot and her droid and ‘trooper as though physical intimidation might somehow compel her to talk. To the young scavenger, the man is an unreadable collection of traits that spread far across the board. She isn’t quite certain what part of him to appeal to- the father, the smuggler, the obviously false bravado- so she decides to give him as good as she’s being dealt.

“It’s not like I kept Platt’s books!” Rey snaps. She looks as though she might even be going for her staff, and Finn puts a steady hand on her shoulder to try and dissuade her from maiming the father like she had the son. Kylo- Ben?- had been nice enough to give him the benefit of the doubt after hearing his story, and to the former ‘trooper it seems like the least he can do. “But yeah, from what I remember, the Irvings might have mentioned that they stole the ship from Ducane.”

“And it was on Jakku the whole time?” Turning to address what Finn and Rey now realize is the strange, mismatched collection of family the pirate can lay claim to, he looks triumphant. “I told you we should have re-checked the Western Reaches!”

“Like you ever would have set foot on a scrap pile like Jakku looking for your precious ship,” Padme shoots back without missing a beat. The old pirate’s expression sours, and he screws up his face and points at his daughter like he’s giving some serious thought to saying something just as ornery as he looks. Chewie growls in agreement, putting a thick-fingered hand on each of the girl’s shoulders in a protective gesture.

“Oh, so now you’re on her side? I see how it is!” Apparently fed-up with what’s beginning to seem like a regular occurrence to the two outsiders, the silver-haired old pirate turns and storms towards the ship’s main entrance with the sort of surly attitude reserved almost exclusively for grumpy recluses and the elderly. “You owe me the damn life-debt, not my kids!” He continues to grouse until he’s out of sight around the corner, the angry grumblings petering off into a semi-awkward silence before he comes storming back as though he’s forgotten something. With a vicious jab of a point in her direction, he addresses Rey.

“And you!” he continues as though he had never left the ship. “When I dump you and your spheroid back on that sandy kriffhole, you can tell whoever the hell Unkar Platt is that Han Solo just took back the Millennium Falcon! For good!”

Without a word further, he turns and stomps back out the way he’d come.

Finn, his mouth hanging open in something resembling wonder, turns to regard the Solo siblings and their mountainous fur-covered companion with a look of sheer amazement. Regardless of the threat to send her and BB-8 back to Jakku, Rey’s dour expression seems to brighten as well- a dazzling smile lights up her features as she looks around at the interior of the ship as though seeing it for the first time. BB-8 follows her with a bleep and a whistle, dogging at her heels as she quickly becomes animated in her investigation of the famous vessel. In the space of a moment she’s disappeared down in the direction of the cockpit, disbelieving laughter trailing behind her just like the spheroid.

“Han Solo? As in, the Rebellion General?” Finn is the first one to speak, surprise coloring the words.

“I swear they made anyone with their own ship a General back then,” Ben mutters. His younger sister jabs him in the same place as Rey had with her elbow, and he yelps and puts a hand to the afflicted area for a second time. Chewie, no doubt sensing an impending fracas, carefully steps between them and separates the two siblings as though he’s been doing their entire lives.

“This is the Millennium Falcon!” the assembled group can hear Rey’s excited yell from over in the direction of the cockpit, followed shortly by a series of happy bloops and whirrs from her little droid shadow. “I got to fly the Millennium Falcon!”

“Where’d you find her?” Padme’s tone is flat and somewhat unimpressed as she cranes her neck back to look her brother in the eye. Her single raised eyebrow says all that she needs it to, her crossed arms only adding to the picture of unimpressed superiority that all the women in Ben’s family seem to be practiced masters of. “She’s probably touching everything. Getting sand on everything.”

“He’s the one that touched everything,” Ben indicates Finn, who makes a strained noise of protest. “Rey knows what she’s doing.”

“She broke your nose,” Padme shoots back.

“It’s getting better!” Self-consciously, Ben carefully examines the bridge of his nose with his fingers. Stinking bacta patch notwithstanding, the mostly-healed break still smarts as he runs his fingers along the brand new twist to his already distinctive profile. Chewie gives a short bark of reassurance, a hairy hand coming up to rest on the man’s shoulder as he nods in sympathy.

“This is the ship that made the Kessel Run in fourteen parsecs!” Rey comes running from the direction of the cockpit, a wide grin visible on her face as she makes a beeline for Finn and immediately grabs him by the shoulders- not quite shaking him, but close. “No wonder we were able to run the blockade so easily, we stole the fastest ship in the galaxy!”

“It was twelve parsecs!” Padme interjects, still sounding surly- but the scavenger’s enthusiasm is contagious, and the young smuggler can’t stop a smile from creeping into her eyes and across the corners of her mouth. “But you’re right,” she boasts, “it’s definitely the fastest ship in the galaxy.” She leans around the Wookiee between them to try and involve her now-silent brother in the conversation, but pauses when she sees the blank, oddly spaced-out look that’s come over his slack face.

“How did I not know?” Rey blurts out, turning away from the unfortunate recipient of her enthusiasm to instead focus squarely on the younger Solo sibling. “All of the custom work done on the engines- no one in their right mind would sink that much time and effort into an outmoded old YT-Model nowadays!” When Padme’s expression turns sour, the scavenger quickly backtracks in an effort to smooth over the unintended insult. “It’s just so hard to find original parts for a YT-Model, Corellia stopped churning them out ages ago. You’re much more likely to see someone trying to do these same modifications to an HU or an MZ, though I really doubt they would have quite the same amount of efficacy- or maneuverability at maximum sublight, for that matter.”

“You seem like you know your stuff,” the young pirate says after a silent moment. She crosses her arms and gives the slightly taller woman a small smile, her severe grimace of a frown melting away into something that- unbeknownst to Rey or Finn- was actually quite rare to see on her cherubic face.

“I built myself a flight sim when I was younger,” Rey says with only the slightest of pauses. She seems almost shy about admitting to the sheer breadth of her knowledge. “When I beat every scenario it could throw at me I started poking around the ships that landed at Niima. Most everyone that came looking for parts was doing it to modify their engines to be faster, but nobody really seemed that concerned with being able to turn at high velocity- which is a mistake, honestly. Going fast in a straight line won’t help you if you come out of hyperspace in an asteroid field.”

“Exactly! Thank you!” Padme crows her delight at apparently being vindicated, and Chewie roars out an accompanying agreement. “You have to have balance between speed and maneuvering capabilities or else you’re just flying an expensive trashcan!”

“Or an expensive coffin!” Rey immediately tacks on with excitement. Padme laughs and cuffs the scavenger on the shoulder with an open hand, wearing a bright smile to rival the desert dweller’s own happy expression.

“I like her!” the younger sibling turns to the older, and when she doesn’t get an immediate response from her brother she whacks him in the ribs with the back of her hand to get his attention. Ben, who had until that point been staring into the middle distance with a thoughtful expression on his face, yelps in surprise and jumps backwards with a hand protecting the likely-bruised spot on his side that every woman in the local star system seems intent upon shoving their elbows into. Chewie chuffs out a warning, the gentle admonishment accompanying his meaty paw as he bats Padme’s hand away from her brother’s sensitive ribs.

“How’d you find BB-8?” Rubbing at his ribs where they still smart, the tall smuggler addresses Rey directly. The question is one that has been weighing on the back of his mind since they managed to find some manner of calm in the Falcon, regardless of whether or not they were still being pursued by the First Order. “What’s the big rush on getting him to D’Qar? Couldn’t you just wipe his banks if he’s got intel that can’t fall into enemy hands?”

“Wipe his banks?” Rey spits out the words like they’re some kind of poison, her excitement vanishing in the space of an instant. “That’s cruel! I would never do something like that to a droid, how would you like it if someone reached into your mind and just took what they wanted?”

“What’s it matter, anyway?” Finn pipes up from behind Rey. “Astromechs aren’t exactly a dime a dozen nowadays, even if he didn’t have that Kyber thingy in his storage compartment he’d still be a valuable resource for the Resistance’s pilots.”

“He’s got a Kyber crystal?” Ben immediately demands. The intensity of his focus paints his face in a frightening light, and both Finn and the little droid take an involuntary half-step back. Padme’s smile vanishes as well, to be replaced with a serious countenance that gives the assembled motley crew a glimpse at the steel core within her.

“Is that important?” Rey asks, cautious.

“It’s what the Jedi use to make their weapons,” Padme explains tersely. Chewbacca adds a chuff and a roar to her statement, shaking one large hand in the direction that Han had left in. Crouching low, the small smuggler beckons gently with one hand for the spheroid to come closer. “May I see it?” BB-8 bleeps questioningly at her, peeking out from behind Finn’s legs with its little domed head and wide black optic pickup.

“The planets the Jedi found their crystals on fell into Imperial hands a long time ago,” with a sigh, Ben picks up the explanation where his sister left off. “They were strip-mined and then destroyed when the mineral surveys started coming up negative- or, in Jedha’s case, used for target practice back when the Death Star wasn’t fully operational yet. The Empire used Kyber crystals as focusing lenses for their station-mounted beam weaponry. Every crystal that was big enough to potentially be used by a Jedi, but too small to be used for a stationary gun, got smashed and turned into lenses for sidearms.” He indicates the little palm-sized crystal-powered blaster clipped to his hip to emphasize his point.

“Hold on,” Rey butts in, “the Jedi were real?”

“Of course they were,” Padme grunts from her awkward position on the floor. BB-8, with a little encouraging from Finn, rolls towards her somewhat hesitantly. A small slot opens in his side, exposing a compartment within which a brilliant yellow crystal- approximately the size of a human thumb- shines. Its most distinguishing characteristic, besides the near-flawless hexagonal structure, is a large band of impurities bisecting it almost equally. When the young smuggler reaches for it, the little droid snaps the compartment shut and rolls backwards with a frightened squeal.

“She’s not gonna steal it!” Finn reprimands the spheroid. Any further exploration of the subject is cut short as a massive bang and crash sound through the hangar outside the ship, the force of the unknown party making the racket actually managing to shake the old freighter slightly. Padme shoots to her feet, and nods as Chewie bleats out a few guttural noises. Ben’s eyes widen, and one large hand immediately goes back to that little blaster at his hip.

“Why’d he just ask about Rathtars?” the tall smuggler asks. Finn freezes, his eyes widening with a distinct expression of fear- rather than the confused shock the smuggler exhibits.

“’cause we’ve got three of ‘em in holding!” Padme takes off like a blaster bolt, running down the access ramp and out into the hangar with Chewie hot on her heels. There’s only a second of hesitation before Ben follows right after her, his blaster in his hand as his long legs carry him out of the ship faster than Rey or Finn can follow.

“What’s a Rathtar?!” Rey demands, running to catch up with the smugglers. “I’m getting awfully sick of doing nothing but asking questions!”

“You got Sarlaccs on Jakku?” Ben shoots over his shoulder, not bothering to turn around as he follows his little sister through a blast door and into a dimly-lit corridor.

“They’re not native, but one got planetside on an infected luggabeast once. A couple of the towns around Niima got together and fed it a crate of frag grenades so it would stop eating the dunepeople and the free-roaming livestock.” Confusion is evident on the young scavenger’s face as she follows behind the dark-haired man. “Why?”

“Rathtars are Sarlaccs with legs,” Finn explains tersely. “Legs, brains, and a vicious streak a parsec wide.” Rey doesn’t have a chance to react to the answer before the five bipeds and their spherical shadow round a corner and almost run bodily into the lanky form of Han Solo. The old pirate seems suspicious in his surveying of the corridors, but his focus zeroes in on his children, copilot, and unwanted passengers almost immediately.

“You heard that?” he asks without preamble. The only ‘that’ he could possibly be referring to is the massive thump that had shaken the entire freighter, and Padme gives a single sharp nod.

“Felt it too,” she says as she rests her hand on the old westar at her hip. “We bein’ boarded?”

“Solo!” A blast door at the end of the corridor slides open with a hiss, admitting a rail-thin man in a ratty old tan coat and a short haircut. His heavily-accented yell has its intended effect of drawing attention, as both Han and Ben turn to look at him in unison- but Padme’s back remains turned to the newcomer.

“That answers that,” she bites out. Rey watches as the girl’s hackles seem to rise, an exceptionally unhappy expression spreading across her face as she reaches- ever so slowly- for the snap on the holster of her westar. Across her shoulder, the scavenger can see a number of red-helmeted guards bristling with weaponry file into the corridor behind the skinny scrap of a man that had forcibly boarded the freighter.

“Bala Tiik!” Han shouts in greeting, a very controlled smile spreading across his face.

“What do you want?” Ben grinds out next to him, all attempts at pleasantry shoved bodily out the airlock.

“Oh, so I have the honor of addressin’ both the elder and the younger!” From the look on his face, Bala Tiik considers it to be anything but an honor. In fact, he looks as though he would rather be doing anything but this, anywhere but his current location. “That makes this whole situation a great deal easier. I want my investments back, Solo. From both of ye!”

Han opens his mouth, the great inhale of breath preceding his usual bluster cutting short as his brain catches up to the skinny gangster’s words.

“What’s he mean, both?” The old pirate’s demeanor slides seamlessly from that of a used starship salesman to that of an admonishing father, as he turns to address his eldest son. “What’d you do?”

“What’d I do? Don’t pin this on me! How deep in the Sarlaac Pit are you with the Guavians?” Ben immediately retorts. To the myriad spectators the bickering Solo men are like competitors in a vicious game of Krav-Gyggat, trading snipes and insults like they would the ball.

“He’s fifty thousand in the hole for the Rathtar hunt,” Padme interjects. Beside her, Rey and Finn are immediately taken-aback. The concept of credits in such quantities, seemingly being thrown around with such abandon, is absolutely mind-blowing to the both of them.

“An’ you’re late on yer last quadjumper payment, Kylo!” Looking as though he’s unused to being ignored, Bala Tiik snaps at the assembled crew and passengers with an unattractive amount of petulance. “Cut the Bantha crap an’ pay me what I’m owed, or I’ll take it out of yer hides!” He pauses, as though composing himself, and clears his throat before continuing. “Exceptin’ yours of course, Padme. Nice ta see ye again.”

“Go take a bath on Mustafar,” the young smuggler practically snarls- still refusing to turn around and face the Guavian representative.

“I imagine I deserve that,” Tiik looks appropriately cowed at her hostile answer, and focuses his attention back on the two Solo men. The two Solo men, on the other hand, immediately focus their attention on the girl.

“What’s he talking about?” Han looks as though he’s about to reach for the dirty, beaten old DL-44 in the holster on his thigh, eyes narrowing and brows furrowing in a distinctly paternal displeasure.

“When’d you dump the Mandalorian?” Ben’s question follows closely on the heels of their father’s, and the greying old pirate does a quick double-take between his two children as he absorbs the small, useless tidbit of information. Before any of the other assembled members of the ugly old garbage trawler’s motley crew can react, Bala Tiik makes a small motion with one hand to the red-helmeted bodyguard closest to him. In a seamless movement, the guard levels the phase rifle held at attention against his shoulder and fires a single shot into the ceiling above their heads.

As the lights flicker around them, the ragtag group of smugglers and defectors whirl around to face the Guavian Death Gang once again. Padme is the first to react, her westar already out of its holster and firing before the sparks from the blasted junction box above their heads have a chance to hit the grated flooring. Rey and Finn, both obviously unarmed, are quickly shoved back down the access corridor from whence they had come by one of Chewbacca’s long arms. The young smuggler’s shot rings true, nailing the unfortunate bodyguard square in the center of the black circle on the front of his bucket. Ben fires almost as quick as his younger sister, the rapid repeat of his crystal-powered blaster letting him squeeze off two shots to each one that Padme can fire with her antique pistol. He and his sibling both duck behind a grimy bulkhead, Ben throwing one long arm out into the line of fire to grab his father by the back of his dirty leather coat and pull him to safety.

The Guavians return fire in the heat of the fracas, their laser bolts mostly flying wide due to their numbers and the sheer size of their rifles as they try to maneuver around the bodies of their comrades lying prone on the grated floor. One particularly unlucky shot goes straight down the corridor and hits the access panel of the door at the far end, the pressure seal flying wide open and revealing the surprised faces of a half-dozen dangerous-looking men.

“What’s Kanjiklub doing here?!” Ben yells over the roar of blaster fire, pulling his younger sister further away from the edge of the corridor. She fights against his large hand on the back of her coat, trying to pull away and squeeze in another shot or two at the skinny, scruffy, Guavian target of her ire.

“Kanjiklub?!” Finn echoes from across the corridor, sounding very much like he’d rather be anywhere than there. Any further communication is drowned out as the Kanjiklubbers begin returning fire towards the (supposed) Guavian ambush, and Rey grabs Finn by the arm.

“I’m going to try to seal them off from each other,” she explains. Behind her, the former ‘trooper can see that she already has an access hatch to the under-floor maintenance tunnels hauled open. “There are emergency bulkheads there and there,” she indicates with her free hand towards the ceiling, where two large durasteel blast doors sit firmly in their tracks. BB-8 trills and beeps from his place next to the hole in the floor behind them, indicating Rey’s route with a shake of his little domed head. Before he can protest her plan, Rey lets Finn go and disappears down the hatch so quickly that the motion could almost be described as a dive. Across the corridor, blocked off by a hail of blaster fire, Ben catches Finn’s eye and makes a series of angry, confused-looking gestures at the open hatch with his free hand- his other hand still occupied with holding his sister back from taking potshots at Bala Tiik’s head. Finn replies with an over-exaggerated panicked-looking shrug and expression, following it up with a quick succession of military hand signals.

“Rey’s gonna trip the emergency blast doors an’ try to seal the gangs off from each other,” Ben translates over the roar of blaster bolts and the occasional scream from one end or the other of the much-abused corridor. Han’s expression very plainly states his opinion of having the young scavenger rummaging through the bowels of his ship, possibly mucking through the delicately jury-rigged systems and pulling breakers at random.

“And what if she trips the wrong ones?” the old pirate grouses. “We’ll be stuck on the wrong side of the kriffing ship with a dozen different slaggers that all want to kill me!”

“In case you haven’t noticed,” Ben turns to snipe back at his father, “they want to kill _us_! Plural!”

“The feeling is mutual,” Padme hisses. The diminutive young woman looks like she’s ready to unfasten her coat and wriggle out of it to rejoin the firefight. She even reaches for the heavy top clasp at the top of the front opening, and her older brother retaliates by pulling up on the back of the coat’s neck until she has to strain on her tiptoes.

“What did he _do_?!” Ben rounds on his sister, who spares him some very choice words in clipped Mando’a. Before the tall, thin smuggler can respond to his sister’s unsavory description of the Guavian leader’s supposed crimes against her person, a massive crash and bang sound through the bowels of the ship. A low whine starts somewhere in the distance, accompanied by the telltale pop-bang-whoosh of the lights and remote control panels in each section of corridor powering down in series. The cascading power failure quickly reaches their part of the old garbage trawler, the sudden blackout bringing a pause to the firefight dividing its mismatched crew.

The sudden quiet, broken only by the creak of the old ship as it shifts under its own impulse-power momentum, is unnerving.

“I’ve got a bad-“ Han starts, only for Ben to unceremoniously slap a hand over his father’s mouth.

“Don’t even,” he grumbles.

In the distance, several decks below their feet and through several foot-thick durasteel walls, three very large _somethings_ screech their displeasure at the sudden darkness.


End file.
